Beak has achieved that confoundingly difficult feat: originality and catchiness. He’s managed to integrate acoustic guitar with breakbeats and IDM in an ingeniously seamless way.
The first track of Amoral Mayor Earwig EP, how a hot air balloon works, starts out straightforwardly enough. Some quiet acoustic guitar plucks, repeating and slowly adding some more layers of guitar. Sure, there’s some digital delay but mostly it’s just guitar. Some bitcrushing distortion eases into the left speaker just enough to raise an eyebrow, but it keeps with the guitar thing. Oh nice, some drums. Maybe even live. Strange processed guitar in the background, almost voice-like. A single reversed cymbal, very quick. Drum break. Quite distorted. Wait, how did we end up here? By the time the second track, i saw two of me, starts our hot air balloon has caught the jet stream. No turning back now.
Amoral Mayor Earwig EP and Bishop-Whitney EP could be two sides of a single album. I tend to listen to these together. El Hacedor is perhaps a little more mysterious, a little mellower. All three are intriguing and highly enjoyable.
Links
Beak on MySpace (bonus downloadable track, Limozeen)
| Amoral Mayor Earwig EP: | Stream | archive.org | Monotonik netlabel |
| Bishop Whitney EP: | Stream | archive.org | Monotonik netlabel |
| El Hacedor: | Stream | archive.org | Monotonik netlabel |
Normally I avoid repetition in music. Usually my iTunes is randomly shuffling from my “Not Recently Played” playlist. Yet I find myself playing these two netlabel albums by Glander multiple times a week. Music that is highly repetitive, with long, sprawling arcs, and four on the floor kick drum. Reading a description of it, I wouldn’t have given it much of a chance. But this is one of my favorite discoveries of the year.
A couple of months after finding Heavy Weights, Vate (released on the 1 bit wonder netlabel) popped up in the archive.org feed. I literally cheered when I saw that there was more Glander to experience. Vate shows how dialed in to his technique Glander is, without at all being formulaic. The same masterful use of repetition is there but there’s a slightly grittier edge to the textures, and I almost get the sense that the camera has a wider angle lens, as bizarre as that is to say about music. These tracks are funkier, too. For instance, listen to the syncopation in the second track, Hmbrg, or the staccato gurgles in Drift. While Heavy Weights is a deep sea dive, Vate is a swooping flight through an urban landscape.
Konterkonzept EP
“Music for Strange Moments.” They appear to be a label, but they also play artists on Ninjatune, Sub Pop and others. They seem to focus on electronica with vocals, which is a nice change after listening to hours of instrumental electronic music. They have a slightly annoying habit of playing their audiomark in the background in the middle of ever other song or so, and also using the dreaded computer voice to announce track info. Their segue music is by someone named DJ Darkhorse. It’s nice that they have created a recognizable format, but I think these could be shortened. All in all a very enjoyable and consistent podcast. The latest episode is particularly good — it’s called “Best of Part One.” Not sure what part one is, or when part two starts, but it’s groovy.
“Music mix of the best and newest sounds from the most forward-thinking record labels out there.” This is put together (monthly I think) by Jonah Sharp, who seems to be an interesting figure in the experimental and electronica scenes. Each episode seems to center around a theme (eg. acoustic guitar). I’ve listened to a couple. One was excellent. The other I just wasn’t into. Yet I’m intrigued.
“Our aim is to produce free, quality podcasts compiled from electronic compositions in various styles including ambient, IDM, electro, trance and experimental.” For a “periodic”, it’s pretty irregular of late (January, April, two in July). However, it’s good, drone-ish ambient music which sometimes goes more into the IDM territory.
“Percussion Lab is a 24/7 stream of the illest underground electronic and hip hop music. Every month we feature live and DJ sets by established and up and coming artists and DJs.” The quality of this one really depends on the particular DJ that’s “spinning” (somehow I doubt the person is really spinning vinyl for the podcast, but you never know). That being said, the last few have been solid (perhaps good enough to forgive them for the use of the old chestnut “illest”). The last episode highlighted artists playing at the 
“The streaming to escape from tomorrow. Electronica IDM Techo: from Tokyo Japan.” It made my day Friday when I discovered that my favorite internet radio station had a podcast. I’ve discovered so much great music listening to this stream over the years. Sometimes it goes so far afield that I have to switch to something else, but that’s what I like about it. It’s incredibly eclectic. If you want to challenge your ears, this is your gauntlet… eh.. thrown down.
Le Noir 71% from French makers, 
For my birthday, along with a cd of 
Amon Tobin is one of my favorite electronic music artists. Everything he does is very evocative, almost cinematic, if only action movies were this good. He has his own unmistakable style, yet it is more a planet than a palette, which is very hard to pull off as an artist. Which is why it is odd that it took me so long to grab his last full-length album, especially considering it is high definition surround mix on DVD-Audio. I suppose the fact that it was a game soundtrack (”Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell 3″) was a stumbling block for me. How good could incidental music loops for yet another first person shooter be? I needn’t have been so cautious. It’s a great album. Maybe not his best, but it’s up there. Moody and atmospheric, yet driving and adrenaline-pumping all at once. Vintage Amon Tobin. Also, this time there are credits to actual performing musicians, including an orchestra. Now I understand — writing for a game was just a way to get someone to front the money for even more grand sound sculpting options. The surround mix is very well done, allowing the spatial placement of sounds to become almost another instrument.
